Author
Topic: Tanging- the myth lives on (Read 6436 times)

bigbearomaha

I have seen those hits for tanging on google search s well. many of them are duplicates from separate referral links, some of them are extremely limited in their context, and of course most of them are pretty much word of mouth reference.

I had seen some references to 'drumming' as another term for tanging and have been looking at those search results also, again, many are in the same context as the tanging results.

The few 'scientific' results I have found are related to studies on bee hearing for the most part and do not truly investigate tanging or drumming in itself.

>>>>I thought "drumming" was getting bees to move up and/or out of an old gum log?<<<<

SEE, that's what you get for thinking. Haven't I warned you about that before? :evil:

Actually, most all the old legends have a half dozen or so names. Banging on pots and pans ain't no different. Location may have something to do with it, too.

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"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

My great-grandfather kept bees in gums in Cartersville, Georgia, in the early 1900's. He farmed and sawmilled and the bees were a bi-product of the logging/sawmilling. He robbed with only a wad of smouldering rags (no veil, suit, smoker, hivetool, etc.). My Dad remembers his great-grandmother banging a pot with a spoon to bring a swarm back to the hive. He recalls that the swarm returned when this method was used.

"I thinks it's bogus that a queen can not "HEAR" other bees flying in a swarm due to some guy running around banging on pots and pans"

I think that's why a chainsaw was suggested as a different method in bringing down a swarm, not so the queen can't hear but so the bees can't hear the queen. That was the theory, anyway. I agree that bees must be able to hear. We just hear vibrations too. I read somewhere that bees have a tympanum on their abdomen, but it was only on the internet so I don't know if it's true.

When I'd heard about the banging on an empty super, I'd thought it was not to bring down a swarm so much as to direct them into a potential home. Anyway, I'm pretty ignorant about this. I just think that bees are fascinating and the way they don't compromise their rules to bend to ours is amazing.

And with us raw beginner beeks, this might be our first introduction to such a concept.

They have a thing at work called evidence-based practice. I can't understand that, because nearly everything we do is evidence based. It doesn't need a big grant and years of research sometimes, but most things you've seen someone do and they work. That is evidence to me. Some other things we do of course because the boss says to.

how about this? if banging pots works for you, bang on. if it doesn't, don't bang. it's not rocket science folks.

Second!

Seriously sometimes old wives tales are just tales, and sometimes they are based on sound observation - aka anecdotal evidence. Lots of good science has been done by investigating anecdotal evidence. But until research has been done with repeatable results and peer review it's all just opinion and speculation - both sides being about equally valid or lacking.

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"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." Samuel Clemens

...It would take a huge number of swarms, to verify repeatable results. "improvement" could be defined as 1% better - under repeated exercises - it would take at least a hundred swarms to produce a 1% result - compared against 100 MORE swarms without tanging. - I don't expect to live long enough to verify the results with accuracy - though I've yet to see a swarm (during my time as a beekeeper). I may watch how they behave without tanging, and then give tanging a try, and if there seems to be a change in behavior in a positive direction, that may be good enough for me.interesting topic

Somewhere in the posts above – there was a reference to using a water spray. When bees are beginning to swarm, I have used a water hose set on mist to wet them and encourage them to land and cluster. Of course they will cluster anyway - but my intervention is to make it happen sooner, lower, and to last longer before they take off again.

I have also used drumming to move bees down in a hive, and frequently use tapping on a frame with my hive tool, to get them to walk off of that frame and back down into the hive.

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Paul

“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." Duncan Vandiver

A boy can do half the work of a man, but two boys do less, and three boys get nothing done at all. :)

(False) Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. - Samuel Johnson

>>>>I thought "drumming" was getting bees to move up and/or out of an old gum log?<<<<

SEE, that's what you get for thinking. Haven't I warned you about that before? :evil:

Actually, most all the old legends have a half dozen or so names. Banging on pots and pans ain't no different. Location may have something to do with it, too.

I would venture to say iddee, that drumming perhaps was used as an explanation to actual tanging, in that most beekeepers never even heard of the word tanging before. I have heard beekeepers refer to tanging as drumming, but have never heard a beekeeper refer to drumming as tanging.

Tanging for hundreds of years has been used to describe banging on metal to settle a swarm as the hive is swarming. Nothing more, nothing less.

Drumming, a much more defined and written about term, defines when a beekeeper beats on a old gum log to get bees to move up and out of the log and into a box placed on top.

I have never read about, or heard about, in my years of beekeeping, a beekeeper drumming out bees from a tree, and using the term "tanging".

But I have heard about beekeepers beating on pots and then calling it drumming. I would say the term used as "drumming" was used for the lack of any other word known to be used.

And even if some "cultural" differences can be use as an excuse, it may be better to clearly define the two going forward.

>>>>And even if some "cultural" differences can be use as an excuse, it may be better to clearly define the two going forward.<<<<

And kill what little chance we have for conversation while the bees are holing up for the winter? NAAAAWWWWW!!!!!!

This thread reminds me of the "delete me" thread.

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"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."